Jennifer Knight, 37, of Taunton, walked into the emergency department at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton on September 13, 2023 and said she thought she was having a heart attack. According to the wrongful death suit her family has now filed, the triage nurse sent her to registration without taking vital signs. About twenty minutes later she collapsed face-first into a wall. She was in ventricular fibrillation with no pulse. Staff worked on her for more than half an hour. She was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m.
The suit, reported by the Boston Globe this week, names two people: the triage nurse, Holly Zachos, and the attending emergency physician, Dr. Andrew Milsten. It does not name the hospital, and it does not name Steward Health Care, which owned Good Samaritan at the time. That omission is the most instructive thing about the case, and it is the reason a Brockton emergency room death has something to say about every Massachusetts patient harmed at a Steward facility in the eighteen months before the company collapsed.
What the family alleges
The estate’s claims are negligence and gross negligence. The theory is standard for a missed heart attack: a patient presenting with chest pain and shortness of breath should be triaged immediately and should have an electrocardiogram within ten minutes of arrival. Had that happened, the suit says, the heart attack would have been identified in time to intervene. Instead she waited in registration.
The context is what makes the case unusual. Two weeks after Knight’s death, federal inspectors arrived at Good Samaritan and found an emergency department with 90 patients and eight nurses where 23 were required. Severely ill patients had no assigned nurse. One patient who had been vomiting sat in the waiting room for more than ten hours. The hospital was placed in “immediate jeopardy,” the most serious regulatory finding. Zachos herself had filed an unsafe staffing report noting she had “worked 16 hours in triage with no assigned meal break coverage or any break throughout shift.”
That is not a record that points at a nurse. It points at whoever staffed the department, and in September 2023 that was Steward.
Why Steward is not a defendant
Steward Health Care filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024. A bankruptcy filing imposes an automatic stay on lawsuits against the debtor. Claims that arose before the filing, including a September 2023 death, become claims in the bankruptcy, paid, if at all, from whatever is left after secured creditors, and Steward had effectively run out of cash. A wrongful death claim against Steward the corporation is a claim against an empty estate.
Individual clinicians are different. The stay protects the debtor, not its employees. Nurses and physicians carry their own malpractice coverage or are covered by policies that survive the employer’s bankruptcy. A plaintiff who wants a recovery, rather than a place in a creditor line, sues the people with insurance. The Globe reported that the family’s lawyer declined to say why Steward was left out. The answer is in the bankruptcy docket.
Good Samaritan itself was sold. Boston Medical Center Health System bought it in the fall of 2024 and renamed it Boston Medical Center South. A purchaser in bankruptcy generally takes the assets free of the seller’s liabilities, which is why the hospital under its current owner is not a defendant either.
What the case will have to clear
Every medical malpractice claim in Massachusetts passes through a tribunal before it can proceed. Under chapter 231, section 60B, a panel of a judge, a physician and a lawyer reviews the plaintiff’s offer of proof and decides whether it raises a legitimate question of liability appropriate for judicial inquiry. If the tribunal finds against the plaintiff, the case can continue only if the plaintiff posts a bond, typically $6,000 per defendant. The tribunal is a screen, not a trial, and a case built on a documented failure to triage a chest-pain patient is the kind that clears it.
The harder question is causation, and it will be fought with cardiologists. The defense will argue that a ventricular fibrillation arrest twenty minutes after arrival was not survivable regardless of triage. The plaintiff will argue that an EKG at minute one, a cath lab activation and a defibrillator at the bedside are exactly what emergency departments exist for, and that she died in a registration line because there was no one to take her pulse.
Damages in a Massachusetts wrongful death action are governed by chapter 229, section 2: the fair monetary value of the decedent to the people entitled to recover, including lost income, services and companionship, plus funeral expenses, and punitive damages of at least $5,000 where the death resulted from gross negligence. The gross negligence count is what opens that door.
The larger pattern
Knight’s is not the first death at a Steward hospital to become a lawsuit, and the timing of Steward’s collapse has shaped every one of them. Families whose relatives died in 2023 and early 2024 have found the corporate defendant unreachable and have sued clinicians instead, which puts the individual nurse who worked a sixteen-hour shift without a break in the defendant’s chair while the company that scheduled her is in a Texas bankruptcy court. The state’s inspection findings, which document the staffing rather than any individual’s judgment, will be the plaintiff’s best exhibit and the defendants’ best defense at the same time.
For anyone with a claim from that period, the practical points are these. The statute of limitations for medical malpractice and wrongful death in Massachusetts is three years from the date of death or discovery, with a seven-year outside limit. Knight died September 13, 2023; the suit was filed within days of the deadline. Claims against Steward itself required a proof of claim in the bankruptcy by the bar date, which has passed. Claims against clinicians do not.
Who was Jennifer Knight?
A 37-year-old Taunton woman who died of a heart attack at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton on September 13, 2023, about twenty minutes after arriving at the emergency department with chest pain.
Who is being sued?
The triage nurse and the attending emergency physician, for negligence and gross negligence. Steward Health Care, which owned the hospital, is not named.
Why not sue Steward?
Steward filed for bankruptcy in May 2024. The automatic stay and the company’s lack of assets make a claim against it a claim against an empty estate. Clinicians carry their own malpractice coverage.
What did inspectors find?
Two weeks after Knight’s death, an emergency department with 90 patients and eight nurses where 23 were required, patients without assigned nurses, and an “immediate jeopardy” finding.
What is the medical malpractice tribunal?
A screening panel under G.L. c. 231, § 60B that reviews every malpractice claim before it proceeds. A plaintiff who loses at the tribunal must post a bond to continue.
How long do you have to file a wrongful death claim in Massachusetts?
Three years from the date of death or discovery, with a seven-year outside limit for medical claims. This suit was filed within days of the three-year mark.
Facts of the death, the suit and the inspection findings as reported by The Boston Globe, September 11, 2026. Statutes read at malegislature.gov. The defendants have not yet answered the complaint; allegations in a civil complaint are unproven. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.